“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” — Gautama Buddha

Monday's BlessingIsiah 60:1

"Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you."

Today many people are living with a victim mentality. They are focused on what they've been through, complaining about how unfair it was, they don't realize they are dragging the pains of the past into the present. It's almost as though they get up each day and fill a big wheelbarrow with junk from the past and bring it into the new day.

Let go of all that stuff you're collecting! Your past doesn't have to poison your future. Just because you've been through some hurt and pain, or possibly you're dreams have been shattered, that doesn't mean God doesn't have another plan. God always has a bright future awaiting. But you must understand one principal: The past is the past. You can not undo it. You can't relive that moment. But you can do something about it right now. Your attitude should be, I refuse to dwell on the negative things that have happened to me. I am not going to think about all that I've lost. I'm not going to focus on what could have been or should have been done. No, I'm going to draw the line in the sand. This is a new day, and I'm going to start moving forward, knowing that God has a bright future in store for me. If you do that, God will give you a new beginning.

​You don’t need to wait for someone else to release you from your prison. You can release yourself from the chains of victimhood using these 10 steps:

1. Stop blaming others
Blaming others may provide temporary relief from our pain, but in the long run, it will lead to feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness.

Here is a quick tip to help you counteract the tendency to blame others. Looking at yourself in the mirror, ask yourself (regardless of how you feel): What is my role in this situation?
In most cases, you’ll see that you have the power to choose your response. Will you let go or hold a grudge? Will you be hopeful or helpless?

2. Be compassionate to yourself
The biblical commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” is well known.
But we often focus on the first part of the commandment — presumably because we take the second part for granted.

However, there’s a quiet epidemic of self-loathing that betrays this assumption. Do you struggle with self-love because of a past moral failure or some other perceived shortcoming? Know that you’re not alone. You can challenge the voices (your own or others) that tell you that you are unworthy of your own love.

Begin by drawing on the warmth of friendship that you know exists potentially in your mind and direct it to yourself.

3. Practice gratitude
Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.
It is practically impossible to feel like a victim when you’re feeling grateful.
The spiritual sages of every tradition teach us that, even in the most difficult of circumstances, we can find things to be grateful for. Indeed, the difficulty itself can be the source of our gratitude for the invaluable lessons we can learn.

Here is a good way to consciously tap into the power of gratitude during difficult times. Ask yourself:What can I learn from this experience?

The lessons, when truly taken to heart, can be life-changing. Be grateful of the lessons that life teaches us, even the hard ones.

4. Resist self-sabotage
What is at the root of our self-sabotaging behavior? Control.

When we’re trapped in the world of victimhood, we tend to be more aware of how vulnerable we truly are. We experience a sense of “deep foreboding.” It’s the sense that disaster is always lurking around the corner. And the sensation is most intense when things are going well.

If disaster is going to come, the victim wants to control when that disaster will strike so he will not be disappointed. Therefore, he undermines his own joy and success with self-destructive behavior.
The inner saboteur is a powerful enemy, but you have the power to resist its seductive and ultimately faulty reasoning. In order for the inner saboteur to bring you down, it requires your participation.

Don’t participate. Resist the feeling that you don’t deserve joy and success. Give up the need for control and enjoy all the blessings that are before you. Accept them fully and graciously.

When you help another person or do a random act of kindness, you’re empowering yourself but not in a manipulative or controlling way. Your power to positively impact someone will help you realize that you can also positively influence your own life.

6. Forgive and let go
Victims often hold on to feelings of bitterness and anger from past hurts. It colors their experiences in everyday life and cause them to negatively misinterpret even well-meaning gestures from others.

We resist forgiving others because of we think it means being weak, excusing the wrong, or being reconciled with the person who hurt us. It is none of these things. It doesn’t require an apology, or justice to be served. Because forgiveness is not about the perpetrator.Forgiveness is all about you.

It’s about your response to the pain inflicted on you. It’s about what you do with that pain to transform it into compassion, empathy, and understanding for the other. It’s about finding the inner strength to move beyond the pain in order to find inner peace and freedom.

7. Build self-confidence
If you’re feeling like a victim, you may struggle with low self-confidence. You may think that self-confident people are born, not made. Yes, some people are naturally more self-confident than others, but self-confidence can be taught and improved upon in any person.

The best way to do it is to emulate confident people. Dress well, hold an upright posture, speak clearly, make eye contact, and exercise. Act confident. Your internal state will begin to match your external actions.

8. Find the source of your learned helplessness
Chronic long-term victim mentality often finds it’s source in learned helplessness that was likely experienced in childhood or early adulthood.

Perhaps you were raised in an environment that fostered dependence, rather than giving you the confidence to fend for yourself. Perhaps an older sibling or spouse consistently discounted your opinions and feelings. Or perhaps you were bullied in school.

The process is painful, but taking the time to find the underlying source of your negativity will empower you with knowledge. This knowledge in turn will give you an opportunity to address the source of the pain.

If you’re struggling to get through this step, a good therapist can help.

9. Shift your mentality from that of victim to survivor
There’s no doubt that bad things happen to good people. But the key to not succumbing to victim mentality is to adopt the mentality of a survivor. In her book What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger, Maxine Schnall compares the two mentalities this way:

A victim asks how long it will take to feel good — a survivor decides to feel good even if things are not so great.
A victim grinds to a halt — a survivor keeps putting one foot in front of the other.
A victim wallows in self-pity — a survivor comforts others.
A victim is jealous of someone else’s success — a survivor is inspired by it.
A victim focuses on the pain of loss — a survivor cherishes remembered joy.
A victim seeks retribution — a survivor seeks redemption.
And most of all, a victim argues with life — a survivor embraces it.

It’s a powerful principle of reasoning credited to the English philosopher and theologian William of Ockham. In short, it says:

the simplest answer or explanation is often correct.
Remember the car that won’t start? The last time that happened to me all these thoughts were swirling around in my mind:

I must have done something to deserve this.

The neighborhood kid messed with my car overnight.

I’ll lose my job and I won’t be able to pay the bills.

Then it occurred to me:
What if the car really did just suffer a mechanical failure?
It sounds crazy, but we get caught up in these thought patterns more often than we care to admit. We frequently engage in worst-case scenario thinking.

Let go of victimhood so you can be free

This Week's Meditation:

There is no will but God's.

Meditate on this for several minutes a day. Allow various thoughts to come into your mind. If you are especially upset state:

I am at peace.
Nothing can disturb me. My will is God's.
My will and god's are one.
God wills peace for me.

Remind yourself of healing each moment. ​God has you in his arms always.

"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

What type of secrets are stashed in your closet? What type of skeletons do you have lurking around the corners of your mind? Don't look so skeptical. We all have them. Sometimes they lie so deep we push them aside and forget about them for a spell. Other times, when we meet some new that we share a kinship, and we open up and share. Nonetheless, they lie there stagnant waiting for the next confession.

It seems no matter how hard we try, they stay as old remnants in the darkest spaces of our being, tucked away waiting for release from time to time. Maybe you've made some serious mistakes; you've done some things that weren't the best for your life, and now you're living in guilt, condemnation, or with a sense of of disqualification. You will remain trapped in those doldrums unless you learn how to receive God's mercy and forgiveness, and move on with your life.

"If you can't get rid of the skeleton in the closet, you better teach it to dance" - George Bernard Shaw

​Here "skeleton" refers to the mistakes you made in the past that you aren't exactly proud of, or something that makes you embarrassed.

What does "dancing" with your skeletons mean? It means acceptance and understanding of how those mistakes helped shape who you are today. Figuring out ways to free ourselves from secrets puts our focus on the future instead of in the past - which we can't change anyway. Accepting ourselves - all of ourselves - is what it's all about.

Rehab was a prostitute, yet God used her to help deliver the children of Israel. Nobody has gone too far, no matter what he's done. You need to know that God still loves you. He has a great plan for your life; he has not run out of mercy. If you have asked his forgiveness, God has already forgiven you. The questions is, "Will you forgive yourself? Will you quit living in guilt and condemnations? Will you let the past be the past and live today in an attitude of faith and victory?

Are you living in guilt and condemnation because of your past mistakes? Take a moment now and let all that go. You can't do anything about the past, but you can do something about right now. If you made mistakes, ask for forgiveness and then move on. God still has a great future for you.

This Week's Meditation:

I will not hold grievances as an attack on God's plan for my salvation.

Meditate on this for several minutes a day. Allow various thoughts to come into your mind. If you are especially upset state:

I will be the light. Darkness is not my will.

Remind yourself of healing each moment. ​God has you in his arms always.

"My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up."

Did you wake up with something on your mind today that's already put you out of sorts? Maybe you already resolved the day to be imperfect due to the undertakings that happened last night. You sit there replaying the events until the movie spirals out of control while you embellish the incident over and over. Before you know it, you're really down and disgusted; and that movie has taken on new heights.

Our time here is so short. What a shame it is to allow something that happened in the past to ruin the rest of the day. No, don't start your day off like that. Get up in the morning and say, "Thank you Father. This is going to be a great day. I thank you that I have discipline, self-control; and that I make good decisions. I may not have control over yesterday, but that day's gone. I'm going to get up and get over it today."

Any morning you get up feeling isolated and out of control from the day before, needs correction right then and there, or that day's going to be ruined. You'll drag around depressed and defeated. Don't allow that trap to snare you.

Instead, get up every morning and receive God's love and mercy. When you feel you don't have a hand on the situation, don't beat yourself up over and over. Nobody is perfect. You simply need to ask God to forgive you and who ever is involved. Then move on, confident that the moment you asked God for this he has already resolved it.

God does not want you to mope around defeated. He wants you to get up and move on. If you have said something that made the situation worst, God chooses not to remember you mistakes. Maybe you were short tempered. Let it go. You may have done something you are not proud of, too, just sit quietly now and ask for forgiveness.

Sometimes we allow these things in the morning to disrupt our day. No matter how upset you are right now, speak to God. Ask for guidance; he is there. Then move on with your day.

This Week's Meditation:

My salvation comes from God.

Meditate on this for several minutes a day. Allow various thoughts to come into your mind. If you are especially upset ask:

What would you ask me to do?
Where would you have me go?
What would you have me say, and to whom?

Remind yourself of healing each moment. ​God has you in his arms always.

"Search me, Oh God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful ways in me, lead me in the everlasting way."

There's an old African story. A tribe in the remotest part of Africa had a devastating issue. Their people were dying because their water supply was contaminated. Even health experts were puzzled since the village got its water supply from a fresh mountain stream that was fed from a spring. When the experts sent some divers down to search the spring's opening, they were shocked to see what they discovered. A large mother pig and her baby piglets evidently had drowned and somehow gotten stuck there, contaminating the crystal clear, pure mountain spring water. The divers removed the dead pigs, and the water began to flow clean and pure once again.

Imagine yourself as a crystal clear stream right now. It doesn't matter how polluted the stream may be, or how muddy, or murky the waters may look in your life today. Is there some form of bitterness in your heart today? Maybe there is something that happened last week or this week that has angered you, and you just can't shake it off. But, instead of letting it go, you've been holding onto it hoping to justify it. Look deeper into the last month, last year, and further on. What types of incidents in your life are clogging and poisoning your stream?

If you don't get rid of it today by releasing, you will learn to accept it. By accepting it, you have given it root to block your stream. And then, my friend, you will learn to live with it. You may know people who say, "Well, I'm just an angry person. That's just my personality. I'm always like this. I'm always bitter. This is who I am." Is this you?

Of course it's not. You need to get rid of the poison that is polluting your life. You were made to be a crystal clear stream. God created you in his image. He wants you to be happy, healthy, and whole. God wants you to enjoy life to the fullest. He doesn't want you to live with bitterness and resentment. He doesn't want you polluted and putrefied contaminating everyone else with whom you have influence.

Imagine yourself as a crystal clear stream. If you begin to forgive the people who have offended you, and release all thous hurts and pains, that bitterness will leave and you will begin to see that crystal clear water once again. You'll begin to experience the joy, peace, and freedom God intended you to have. If you don't, just likes those pigs that were trapped, one day that contamination will show up in your life.

This Week's Meditation:

My thoughts are images I have made and not God's.

Meditate on this for several minutes a day. Allow various thoughts to come into your mind. Each time a negative thought comes, imagine that you are walking through the dark clouds of your mind. Allow the clouds to touch you, feel its presence and then move on. Imagine as you go deeper there is a great light in the middle as you past these barriers. Remind yourself of healing each moment. ​